McKayla Maroney talks about surviving Larry Nassar abuse

McKayla Maroney appeared on "Today" on Wednesday, less than 24 hours after?making her first public appearance since revealing she was sexually assaulted by former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar.

Speaking to Savannah Guthrie in a pre-taped interview,?Maroney said she was abused the first time she saw the disgraced doctor as a 13-year-old, and during every visit after, which the former Olympic gymnast estimates to be "hundreds" of times.

"He told me he was going to do a checkup on me and that was the first day that I was abused," she said. "He said that nobody would understand this and the sacrifice that it takes to get to the Olympics, so you can't tell people this. He didn't say it in a way that was mean or anything like that. I actually was like, 'That makes sense. I don't want to tell anybody about this.' And I didn't believe that they would understand."

During a Q&A session on Tuesday at the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children's spring luncheon, Maroney, 22, took aim at USA Gymnastics, the United States Olympic Committee and Michigan State University for allowing Nassar's serial abuse to happen.

"We know that [Nassar] was a monster," she said. "Learning from everything that's come out, I never should have met him. USA Gymnastics, MSU and the USOC continued to look away to protect their reputations. All they cared about was money, medals and it didn't seem like anything else."

More than 250 women and girls, including Maroney's former teammates Aly Raisman, Gabby Douglas and Jordyn Wieber, have publicly come forward accusing Nassar of sexual assault. He was sentenced to 60 years in prison on child pornography charges in 2017 and sentenced to at least 80 additional years by two additional Michigan judges for sexual assault earlier this year.

USA Gymnastics responded to Maroney's comments in a statement to NBC News and praised her courage for speaking out.

"We are doing everything possible to prevent abuse, and we hope everything we do going forward makes this very clear," the statement read.

The full interview with Maroney, as well as an interview with former national team coordinators Bela and Martha Karolyi, will air during a "Dateline" special on Sunday night on NBC.